


whatever a sun will always sing

by redandgold



Category: Football RPF
Genre: .......oh yes i went there, Blood and Gore, Liverpool F.C., M/M, removable heart au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:08:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5832007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s watching him like you first saw him, soaring down the wing because no one told him humans couldn’t fly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	whatever a sun will always sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anemoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/gifts).



>   
> _"The best player I've ever played with is Steve McManaman ... he really was that good." - Robbie Fowler_  
>  ([music.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzQ9VrnNQLQ))
> 
>   
> 

_i._

The first time you offer your heart you’re not a day over seventeen.

He’s three years older but he seems a giant, and if you were the type to use the word you might have even said hero; Scouse lad shuffling up through the academy to be man of the match in an FA Cup final. It’s not, you think, his golden hair or the crooked front teeth that appear when he sticks his chin out and smiles, even though they do help, a little. You think long and hard about what it is, what It is, as you watch him glide in and out on the field, dancing past defenders with the grace of a waterfall.

Long after the game, when you’re cleaning out the baths and trying not to think of what they do in there, he pokes his head in and says, “- oh. Didn’t realise anyone was still around.”

You give him an uncertain smile and he returns the favour. “Just left my towel,” he says, crossing the room to snatch it up. You watch him walk and stop thinking. It’s in that moment, not really knowing what it means (- or perhaps you do, in that flash of clarity for seventeen-year-olds where everything is so simple and so clean and so pure, where all you have to do is give and he will take -) you blurt out, “d’you want my heart?”

He slows down and stops just before he reaches the towel, his hand paused in the air. Behind him (out of sight) you bite your lip and mentally curse the flippant nonchalance of the way you said it, laying bare your childishness for him to see.

“Where did you hear about that?” he asks, turning to face you. There is no malice in his voice.

“A – some of the lads, they’d heard – stories,” you stammer, not quite able to meet the ocean in his eyes.

He picks up the towel and crosses back to you, swinging an arm over your shoulder (and it fits, weirdly, naturally; like you’ve always been best mates, like you can go to dinner parties and tell ‘when Steve was seven he used to come over and eat my cookies all the time, d’you remember, Steve?’ stories). He’s quiet for a while, almost like he’s thinking not what to say but how to say it, then he grins easily. “That’s for the first team to know.” His arm still around your neck, he reaches up and flicks your ear. “Tell you when you get there, deal, small ears?”

When, not if. You blush (red) under his gaze. “Deal.”

He disentangles himself from you and heads for the door. Just before he leaves, he leans back and says, “what’s your name, anyway?”

“Fowler,” you begin, but he shakes his head, and you end, “Robbie.”

 

You realise, only later, what It is – it’s who his crooked front teeth are smiling at (you).

 

_ii._

It registers as the most important thing in your head (forget the goal, forget the points, forget the other shirts on the field) – he’s running towards you, _first_ , you note idly he’s got a haircut, and there’s the arm nesting like it’s always been there. Grateful for the excuse, you reach out and put your own arm around him, pulling him close and burying your face in his shoulder. Everything is red, everything is good.

“Well in,” he’s yelling at you with obvious delight, and the thought makes you grin all the wider. “That was a belter, Robbie, I didn’t know you could do that shite, do the tiny ears give you superpowers?”

“Fuck off,” you say laughing, thinking your heart might burst at any moment. First team, first goal, first time he says your name.

You trek back to the halfway line and he runs next to you, with you. Without saying a word you look at him and the sea-blue of his eyes, and he knows what you offer.

“Not now,” he murmurs, brushing your (small) ear with his lips, the tiniest of contact unnoticeable (unmissable) in the euphoria. “Now you’ll need it, more than ever. Listen to that, eh? Listen to that. They’re singing for you.”

So you close your eyes, hands balled into fists, feel the weight of his arm vanish from your shoulder (like an old friend saying goodbye), and you listen. To the announcer booming out _number twenty three_ and the way it rings around the ground. To the two thousand fans packed in the away end, singing _walk on, walk on._ To the hope in your heart.

(He said your name, he said your name, he said your name.)

 

_iii._

You fall in love.

(It’s not, you have to qualify, the way other boys fall in love. It’s not the moments you catch him with his shirt off and feel a shiver up your spine, even though you do. It’s watching him like you first saw him, soaring down the wing because no one told him humans couldn’t fly.)

He calls you Growler and no one knows why, not even you; you’ve asked him over and over again and each time you get a different answer (you’re always hungry) (you moan too much) (you’ve got the ears of a bear…that growls). You call him Macca and so does everyone else, but you realise that he only really brightens up when you say it.

And it works, that’s the thing. He’s shit at finishing and you’re shit at dribbling and you’re perfect together. When he’s flitting forward, darting runs like a gazelle, you’re there in the box waiting for the ball you know will come. Or when that crazy fucking terrier Neville is trying to hound him off the ball, you’re always hanging just aside, open to him.  Like clockwork. Like the way his hand slips into yours under the table on nights out with the lads.

Only today it’s different; only today you’re nowhere to be seen, blended into the grass, the ball hardly ever touching the inside of your boots. He catches your eye once and looks away, helpless.

The final whistle blows and the Mancs are off, the wrong red, singing Cantona’s name instead. You trudge off the pitch, looking around for some indication of what to do; you don’t know how this is supposed to feel, this emptiness and the silver gleam of the trophy you must now walk past. The only thing left is his long, lean frame standing just before you, a reminder that it isn’t the end of the world.

In the evening you go to your favourite pub to commiserate (celebrate defeat, he says with his indefatigable grin). You get a table in the corner and neither of you say a word till until you’ve polished off two beers.

Losing, you think, doesn’t suit him. His smile is only for your sake, and his eyes are faraway. You reach over to brush his hand, all smooth. “Macca,” you say.

He turns his palm over and takes your fingers. “Growler,” he says.

“Will it help,” you bite your lip, “if you take it?”

He laughs. “Even if it hurts?”

“Even if it hurts.” Even if anything, Macca, if it’s for you.  

The air in the pub is stifling and so still that you fear if you move you will crack it. He leans back in his chair, balanced on the last two legs.

“I don’t need it,” he says, squeezing your hand. “You’ll still be here to annoy me, won’t you?”

Then he pulls his chair back towards you, his arm draping itself around your shoulder almost automatically, and you begin to understand a little bit of what he’s really saying when he says no.

 

_iv._

He tastes like –

 

(- hazelnuts.)  
(- a golden sky.)

– the boy you grew up with, lanky and Merseyside, the salt sea air of Huskisson. How you find out is –

 

You’re over at his, sat on the sofa watching _Match of the Day_. Liverpool and Derby are on. His hand is around your shoulder. You score the first goal; he punches the air in mock-revelry while your face reddens. “Mate,” he says, squinting at the pixels of the telly, “you need to work on your celebration.”

Pixel-you is just running around like an idiot and you give him a dirty look. “I never get to do anything else,” you moan. “You’re always there even before I realise it’s gone in.”

“Like that’s a bad thing,” he teases, and you laugh, having to agree. “All right. Maybe we can do something together.”

You tilt your face up towards him (even on the sofa you’re shorter). “Like what?” you ask, reaching up and giving his hand a squeeze.

“Like – ”

Then his hand is cupping your cheek and his lips are against yours, exactly like you always imagined, as soft and shining as he is. Your fingers are in his hair, tightening around the curls, dropping to the hem of his shirt. You remember what the rough fabric against your bare skin feels like. You remember the TV calling you god.

It always happens at his house and his room, not yours (you don’t really know why; maybe it’s because when you see his floppy hair and dorky grin your first thought is _home_ ).

And life goes on in football (and life, in chaste kisses rough showers lazy lie-in Sundays, goes on).

Your favourite thing is making him tea. It’s not that he can’t, but he’s a lazy sod and anyway the way he says “go on, then, small ears, make us a cuppa” with those wide eyes always makes you crumble. Anything, Macca. So you put the kettle on and break out the Earl Grey and pour it into your two favourite cups. The two of you are curled up on the sofa again, and you lean back in the crook of his neck, your fingers warm with steam.

“It’s already yours, you know,” you say.

He turns to you and smiles. His eyes have begun to crinkle at the corners. He says, “I know.”

 

_v._

The fifth time you offer your heart is the last.

In the future you’ll look at other bright-eyed young children (Stevie) and think, a little bit selfishly, that at least theirs is short and sharp and like ripping a scab off. You have to pick at the scab for six months, each more painful than the last, and fight the dread that rises in your throat every night like a late goal from the opposition. He doesn’t even tell you before his interview, where he stares down the camera and says, “I’d like to play abroad.”

You don’t convince him to change his mind. You know him (better than anyone) and you know that any mention of Liverpool and a new contract is farce, a dream to be tossed and blown. You make him more tea.

When he signs the contract with Real Madrid, you aren’t there. Redders says at least it’s proof you’re two different people. (You think, I ought to have known that all along.)

Somehow you survive, pouring everything you have left into your football; the language you know best, where there are no goodbyes, and Spain just another country where teams come from for you to beat. He’s still here, side by side, assists and goals, perfect together. You swallow hard and smile only for his sake. After the funeral you cradle his head and whisper it’s going to be okay, Macca, it’s going to be okay (as much for your benefit as for his). He weaves his fingers into the cool fabric of your shirt, just below the crest.

The day before his last game, you’re standing outside of Anfield. It’s dark and quiet over the city, as if she’s saying goodbye to her sons. The Shankly Gates glisten in the sliver of moonlight. So do his eyes as you look up into them and say (like a seventeen-year-old), “d’you want my heart?”

A soft, sad spark flits across his face. He says, “okay.”

You walk in and lie down on the pitch, the dark grass jabbing into the back of your clothes, and hand him the knife. He straddles you, not roughly, and slides the cold metal against your hot skin. It’s over in three incisions, all as neat and precise as his pull backs; he reaches in and you bite your lip as he tugs it loose. There’s a brief moment where it becomes both yours and his, when he seems to be holding all of you – everything you ever were and will ever be – in his hand. Then he’s placing it gently on the ground, and somehow you don’t feel like you’ve lost anything.

He presses his palm against the rawness of your chest. It’s red when he takes it away. “Now me,” he murmurs, handing you the knife.

You don’t ask questions, just change positions with him, slipping across the long, lanky body and burying your knees in the field. You’re not as good as he is and the strokes are clumsier; he shudders, bites his lip, doesn’t make a sound. There’s that moment again (you think, who needs a heart when you have this memory?) and it joins the first, dark and faint outlines almost touching.

“What are we gonna do with them?” you ask, choking back a laugh. “Training footballs?”

“You’d want to, wouldn’t you,” he grins. He’s twenty six years old and golden and you could kiss him then (but don’t).

“Well, then. Are you going to bring them with you?”

“Nah.” He squeezes out from underneath you and stands up, brushing off his trousers. “Something better.”

Together you run across the pitch, all the way from the one end to the other, him dancing down the wing like a waterfall, the Kop looming large above your heads. He takes out a small, handheld spade and pushes it into the ground just before the goal line.

You place both hearts (both of you) into the same hole and he covers it up again, smoothing over the grass so that it looks like it was never touched. Then he looks up at the Kop, raises his bloodied hand towards the letters _L. F. C._ , and breathes in.

“There,” he says. “Now you’ll never walk alone.”

 

 

 

 

_vi._

You’ve written the word ‘Macca’ in big bold letters on a piece of blank card and wait for him with your chauffeur’s cap and badly-worn suit. He spots you immediately and bursts into a peal of laughter, all clean and bright and gold, and you feel muscles in your face that hadn’t been used for years cranking into operation again.

He swings a long, easy arm over your shoulder, smiling at you with crooked front teeth. You reach up and squeeze his hand, marvelling at how natural it all is, time and distance melting away until all that’s left is the ocean in his eyes. “How’s it in Manchester?” he asks in the car.

“All right. Neville’s still around. Weather’s still shit.”

“Ugh. Remind me why I came back.”

 

Because –

 

(- Macca and Growler.)  
(- the song of a lark.)

 

– you find yourselves in Liverpool a day before the rest of the team get here, hiding your blue shirts in the dusty pillowcases of the hotel rooms, sneaking in the back route only reds would know. The same moon is up, dappling the pitch with streaks of silver.

“I bet you’ve forgotten where,” he whispers, brushing your ear with his lips, his arm drawing you close.

“Not a chance,” you grin. Older, creakier, but you run to the Kop anyway, he next to you with you, and once they called you god. The rows of stiff-backed seats rise into the distance. He raises a hand towards the gleaming white letters, then clenches his fist over _L. F. C._ and holds it to his chest.

“Go on, then, small ears,” he says.

You push the spade into the grass beneath your shoes. The crunch rings over the empty stadium, bringing you home.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. MOST IMPORTANT [THIS](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5236511) AND [THIS ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5042488)\- honestly you don't know this pairing until you read that first one, and the second one is one of the best au ideas ever (sorry for using it ;-;)  
> 2\. Dates:  
> i. some time after 9 May 1992 (FA Cup Final)  
> ii. 22 September 1993 ([Growler's debut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoQ-8Cgp57A) \- Macca rly is the first person on the scene)  
> iii. 11 May 1996 (FA Cup Final :) - Macca does stand in front of Robbie when they're collecting their runners-up medals)  
> iv. 25 October 1997 (Liverpool 4-0 Derby - there's no footage for this cries)  
> v. 15 May 1999 (before Liverpool 3-0 Wimbledon - Macca's last game)  
> vi. 26 December 2003 (before Man City 2-2 Liverpool - both of them started and Robbie scored a pen)  
> 3\. Huskisson is a dock in Kirkdale where Macca was born  
> 4\. Sorry I kept mentioning Gary bc of [the headbutting thing](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00727/sport-graphics-2004_727720a.jpg) (Macca did it first fight me)  
> 5\. Title from Cummings cries  
> 6\. Basically!!! blame shaz (co92 dogpile fic :)))))))))))  
> 7\. Everything I got I got from wikipedia >> *****Manc sorry if I got any Liverpudlian things wrong >>  
> 8\. The funeral is Macca's mum, who passed away from breast cancer during that period.  
> 9\. Thanks for reading <3


End file.
